Disable text to speech globally in OS X 10.5.8

We had a problem with students using text to speech to make the Macs tell dirty jokes and cause distractions in class rooms.  So I found that the Voice Over Utility found in /Applications/Utilities will create a user level property list when launched and edited.  I also noticed that you could dump (export) the preferences to a file once you configure it.  Upon inspection of said file I found this string:

SCRCategoryIsEnabled

So, naturally the first thing I tried on my own iMac workstation is:

defaults write /Users/tlarkin/Library/Preferences/com.apple.VoiceOver SCRCategoryIsEnabled -bool false

Sure enough it was disabled at this point.  You can test it by going to the Finder or Application that is in use menu and click on that menu.  Then go down to Services and select Speech.  You should see every option is grayed out and not selectable at all.

As you can see the Speech options are disabled.  This way no one can longer use speech options to disrupt the class room.  Another way to do it is to add this into MCX via Open Directory and WGM (Work Group manager).  First remote into your OS X Server box and launch WGM.  Select the User, Group, Computer or Computer group you wish to manage.  Then click on Preferences on the top menu bar.  Once that loads you will want to click on the details tab, and add the plist com.apple.VoiceOver.plist.

Now click on the little pencil icon to add in your code to manage it via MCX.  This should update with in a few minutes but you can force it by logging in and logging out o the client computer.  To add the string to WGM follow this screen shot:

So you just add that string SCRCategoryIsEnabled, choose boolean and false and hit apply.  Now all cleints in that user group or computer group will get the managed preferences push out via MCX.  Pretty slick and easy and quick results.  When testing this out I first had it set to Always, but found it didn't work right, so I changed it to manage it often, and it worked like a charm.  All the cleints I remotely logged into over ARD Admin had the same grayed out selection from the speech services menu as the screen shot at the beginning of the article.

Thanks for reading,

Tom